1_Name: Bobbie
3_Comments: Explain 1 Corin 14:34, where it says “women should keep silent in the churches”
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Hi Bobbie
First thing to understand here is the word incorrectly translated as “churches”. The Greek here is a word for an assembly of people. It is not an institution, a denomination, or a building or anything that in modern times is commonly thought of as “church”. Paul is referring to assemblies of God’s saints. Second thing is to understand who these saints are: They are men and women who have been baptized with the holy spirit with the initial evidence of speaking in tongues. Nothing Paul says applies to any other situation than a gathering of spirit-baptized saints of God. Paul is talking about what is to go on during the assemblies of these spirit-baptized people in Corinth.
Throughout this chapter Paul is referring to people addressing the assembly as a whole. People are not to speak in uninterpreted tongues to the assembly but if there is no interpreter they are not to be forbidden to speak in tongues but rather to speak to God and to themselves.
As for women, Paul is teaching that women should not speak to the assembly as teachers. Paul also wrote this to Timothy: “Let the woman learn in silence with all subjection. But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence.”
However, I do not believe that Paul is forbidding a woman to say, tell a testimony or deliver words that God has given them. Philip, a holy man and evangelist had four daughters who all prophesied. Paul also accepted testimony against saints from a household he refers to as being of a woman. “For it hath been declared unto me of you, my brethren, by them which are of the house of Chloe, that there are contentions among you.”
None of this stops God from using a woman in any way He sees fit at any time. God is not subject to rules.
Damien Callaghan
webmaster
www.goingtojesus.com